


Balloons

by oatsandcocoa



Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Aidan and Dean are bffs, Also this is sad, F/M, Gen, and sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 12:25:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1226176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oatsandcocoa/pseuds/oatsandcocoa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was his mom's idea to write him a letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balloons

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling a bit down today, so I wrote this... It's unbeta'd and I hope not too terrible ^^

Dean and Aidan spent all their free time together, which was rather easy, as they lived just next to each other. Their afternoons were usually spent lounging about the Turners’ backyard or playing football at the park a little further down the road. Sometimes, when it was raining outside, Dean would try to teach Aidan how to play videogames, but the hand-eye-coordination of a toddler left a lot to be desired. More often than not it ended with Dean doing the running and jumping and Aidan pressing the shoot-button when the older boy told him to. But despite their age difference, the two of them were best friends. They would build snowmen together every winter when the O’Gormans and the Turners celebrated Christmas in the same living room.  


  


Aidan was five when Dean died.  


A car had hit the twelve year-old while he was riding his bike across the street he lived in. He was dead almost instantly.  


While Aidan didn’t quite understand the concept of death yet, something told him that Dean wasn’t coming back, no matter how long he would sit on the front steps of his house and wait. Sometimes, Dean’s mum would come outside and sit with him for a while, and she would tell him stories about his friend. But after a while, she would tell him to go back home, and Aidan would.  


  


One day, after the five-year old walked through the front door, he asked his dad about the whereabouts of his best friend. John brought him to the window and pointed his finger upwards. “Dean went up there, buddy. He’s probably sitting on one of them clouds right now, laughing and waving.”  


“Do you think I can talk to him?” Aidan mumbled, his eyes on a cloud shaped like weird-looking bird. “Why not? I’m not sure if he can answer you, though, it’s quite the way from here to up there” his dad said, and added, “I’ll have to go into town, but I’ll be back in a bit, okay?” The curly-haired boy nodded and stomped up into his room.  


Aidan tried talking to Dean for months, mostly at night, before he went to sleep. But he never heard his friend talk back to him. Maybe his dad was right, and the distance was too big for Dean to hear him.  


  


It was his mom’s idea to write Dean a letter and attach it to a balloon. Seeing as Aidan couldn’t write yet, Siobhan Turner wrote down what Aidan told her, and he set his name underneath the neat script of his mum in messy letters. Together, they fastened the letter to a helium-filled balloon Aidan had got at the fair that day, and let it go in the garden. Aidan watched as it went higher and higher into the air, until he couldn’t see it anymore. Only then did he let his mother take him back inside for supper. 

  


“Papa, papa, wait!” called the high-pitched voice, and Aidan bent down to pick up his son before he would barrel into his legs. Mindful of the child sitting against his hip, Aidan tied the knot around the piece of paper. “What is that?” asked the little boy, his blue eyes shining with curiosity. His father smiled sadly. “It’s a letter to an old friend,” he provided, and let the balloon go.  
“There you two are! C’mon, supper’s ready”.  
Aidan gave the balloon a last wistful glance before he turned around and walked back inside to the smell of roasted potatoes and salmon. “Let’s go wash our hands, or mummy’s gonna be cross, eh, Deano?”

  


In the last rays of the setting sun, a green balloon was carried by the wind, higher and higher, until it couldn’t be seen anymore.

  


_I still miss you, mate.  
-Aidan_


End file.
